UPND Must Hold General Conference-UPND long-time member, Innovent Innocent Matyola
TO BE FOREWARNED IS TO BE FORARMED
Good day to all my ordinary UPND members and our leaders.
We are a political institution and a political party existing in the Great Republic of Zambia , a country with a National Constitution as its unique book of do’s and don’ts.
Our political party has a constitution that deals with various organizational concerns such as the convention , disciplinary etc..We have said time and time again that our administration is one that is anchored on the rule of law and the general public expects us to act as such even in our own internal party matters.
Our good president himself is a product of a democratically conducted convention which was held on the 26th May 2006.
If we truly love our party and the president, let’s be truthful to ourselves and to him as our flag bearer.
We have nothing against those who joined us recently or along our long political journey who may be privileged today except with a few who thrive on lying to our leaders and blackmailing old party members in order to appear relevant to some of them and we know some of them are the ones peddling this unsustainable lie that even without the convention positions in the party leadership can be filled using dark corner peacemeal approach. These are lies.
I know that many of our friends may not be privy to the critical facts about the party’s history and heritage, including the process that brought about President HH to be at the helm of the party today.
Here is some free information. When our UPND founding President Anderson Kambela Mazoka died in April 2006,our good team called the National Management headed by the acting party president, a renowned constitutional lawyer called Mr. Sikota organised a convention that was held at the Mulungushi Conference Center on 27th May 2006 at which two contestants, namely Mr. Baldwin Nchite ,a businessman who operated in Botswana and South Africa and the then CEO of Grant Thornton Mr. Hakainde Hichilema weighed into this contest against Mr.Sakwiba Sikota to lead the UPND.
In a hair rising debate , we saw each one of these three appealing to the electoral college of party structures who had traveled from all the 9 provinces then. On the sides, the Secretary General ,vice, National Chairman and all the National Management Committee positions and various committees positions were up for grabs by all those that were able , the rest is history but, the unhappy acting president Sakwiba Sikota formed the ULP which went into an alliance with the Michael Sata led Pf in the general elections of that same year.
The question is , do we have an issue in having a convention as required by the national constitution of this country?
Do we honestly think that the national constitution will have to be adjusted for our sake so that the Electoral Commission of Zambia will also relax that pre-qualification requirement of holding a convention before filing in to contest this year’s August 13th general elections? I doubt it .
Why does it appear like we have a growing cold feet in addressing this important national issue as a ruling party who ought to have been proud to lead by examples ?
Has it occurred to all of us, the UPND, that if we dont hold a convention, the most likely outcome is that our party the UPND may not even participate in this year’s general elections and no courts will come to our aid to remedy this embarrassment ?
Where are the seasoned constitutional legal experts in our party and our political advisory teams who ought to have taken care of this situation?
Could there be some game of tactical deception at play in which our leadership may have been made to think that this constitutional requirement will only apply to the opposition political parties and not the ruling UPND?
I believe it’s high time we got a much more serious official position on the date of the convention as required by our party and the national constitution.
The observation that some political parties had departed from undemocratic practices by operating like monarchs in avoiding intra party elections is the hallmark of the constitutional amendment to make it a law for all parties to have conventions as a pre-qualification for filing in to contest the general elections.
Let us resist the temptation of thinking that the incumbency factor will save us from obeying this law because we may end up scoring into our own net and give away power on a silver plate.
I wish to seriously urge ourselves as party members as well as our leaders to take this issue seriously as we will not blame anybody for any political negligence if we choose to eliminate ourselves from contesting this year’s general elections owing to trivialising the convention issue.
May God bless us with wisdom to decern the hidden agendas of those who fake their loyalty to our leaders.
Matyola Innocent.